Review of The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus

*The Quiet Ear* by Raymond Antrobus (2025). Published by Hogarth.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Running a book blog and reading almost two hundred books a year (I’ve done this almost every year of my life—it’s been a fascinating trend, even when I’ve been too busy to exist outside of life and work), I tend to know what kind of books I like. I’m also very intentional in analyzing the trends of what I’m reading, as I’m genuinely committed to diversifying the books I pick up and see new perspectives.

I often go to the library to hunt among the shelves for books that interest me, whether I have heard of them not or before, but lately I’m coming out of an unemployment spell. For the longest time it feels like I’ve been starting all of my blog posts detailing my journey as an unemployed Gen Z-er trying to find a job in this horrendous market, but I did end up finding a job eventually after 300 applications.

It took a while, but I got there. During that period where I was job hunting I ended up finding out in my free time that I would go insane if I constantly thought about my future, so I read a lot and watched a handful of movies here and there. This blog has been a flurry of activity because of that.

Lately, right before I start my job, I’ve been trying to tackle my advance copy collection. I always try to get the reviews out the day of the book’s publication, but sometimes life does get in the way and I find myself getting to the book and finishing up its story days, weeks, and rarely months after the book has come out.

This book, The Quiet Ear, is one I read in a sitting. I was very invested in this memoir, and it made me realize how little I’ve read from authors and writers with disabilities. I want to change that in the near future.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much! Much love to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book.

Antrobus’ story and how he became a writer and understood how his deafness is interpreted and perceived in the world around him.

So, as mentioned before, this is a memoir. I was definitely not familiar with Antrobus’ work before going into this memoir, and had no idea they were a poet. I know pretty much all the big names working within the American poetry scene, as someone who has worked within it and published myself, but British poetry publishing is a true mystery to me.

All of that is to say that I was not familiar with Antrobus at all, nor the impact of their work. We learn through his own words that throughout his childhood people just thought that he was acting out and not paying attention, but in actuality he couldn’t hear anything that was being said or noises at a certain frequency.

That lead to a deafness diagnosis at the age of seven, much to the disbelief of the people around him. He was fitted with hearing aids and sent off into the world, learning how to navigate it for the first time as someone able to hear new sounds that he couldn’t before, but also as a mixed kid grappling with everything going on.

His father is Jamaican and mother English, which creates an interesting dynamic as well. That adds a layer of race and colonialism to the discussion at hand, especially considering how people of color are often neglected or not heard in the medical systems.

Granted, I’m typing this with the little base information I have about systemic issues in England. I suggest you go further beyond this memoir and read more about it from professionals and academics who have studied this—I am someone who has read a little on the subject, but I do not feel comfortable presenting myself as an expert.

This is to say though in the context of this memoir that Antrobus does discuss how the intersections of race, class, and society impact how he is perceived and treated in English society. There are some facts thrown in here about the deaf community that I had no idea about—like the only school for the deaf is in Washington D.C., but its tuition is too expensive and most deaf people are unable to afford it.

There are also extensive issues about representation and communication that Antrobus brings up throughout the memoir, especially when it comes to his own experiences as a writer publishing. One of the striking ones, perhaps it’s because I spent way too much time studying Plath, is about Ted Hughes.

Antrobus writes that Hughes is revered in England as a poet (which he is), but in one of his poems about a deaf school, he depicts the deaf students as animalistic. While they would have used their own sign language skills, he reduces their intentional movements to animalistic and frenzied, which is disappointing to see but also unsurprising.

It’s those critiques and little details packed into this that make me so appreciative of these kinds of books. I realized while I was reading this I had never read a memoir by a deaf person, so when I read these critiques, it opens up completely new perspectives of seeing the world in my mind.

Overall Thoughts

I genuinely enjoyed this memoir a lot. Sometimes memoirs I approach with a healthy dose of skepticism, especially if they’re written by celebrities or people that seem to be too young to be publishing a memoir, but this memoir felt appropriately published and is on such a relevant subject.

I don’t know about the United Kingdom, so I defer to people living there, but here in the United States disabled people are under a very real threat with the new political administration. In the past six months of typing this, healthcare has been under fire, and the people who need these benefits the most are vulnerable.

So it feels timely to read books like these and understand someone else’s perspective. It also was really interesting learning about Antrobus’ work, his background, and how he seeks to educate and inform with this book. I certainly learned a lot while reading this.

I say pick this one up if it interests you! Go find a copy at your local library or indie bookstore if you get the chance.

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